Right to terminate tenancy under Section 33B for bona fide personal cultivation is personal to certified landlord, abates on death, not inheritable; extinguished by land sale, barring heirs' claims.

Judgement :

SOMASEKHAR SUNDARESAN, J.

1. Rule. Rule is made returnable forthwith by consent of the parties, and is taken up for final hearing.

Context and Factual Background:

2. The challenge in this Writ Petition is to an order dated November 30, 2023, passed by the Maharashtra Revenue Tribunal (“MRT”), which allowed a revision sought by the Respondents, reversing an order of the Collector, which had held the Petitioners to be entitled to be landowners of the property in question (“Subject Property”).

3. The factual matrix falls in a rather narrow compass. In 1958, one Mr. Sadashiv Datar (“Datar”) was originally granted a certificate as a certified landlord with holding of land of a size below economic holding under Section 88C of the Bombay Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1948 (“the Act”). This certificate was the subject matter of litigation. Eventually, the Supreme Court, by an order dated October 7, 1985 (“SC Order”) dismissed a Special Leave Petition and upheld the grant of the 88C Certificate in favour of Datar.

4. Thereafter, Datar was directed to initiate proceedings under Section 33B of the Act, which entitles a landlord holding an 88C Certificate, to seek termination of tenancy on the premise of bona fide need of the land for personal cultivation. Under Section 33B, such an application is required to be filed within three months from the receipt of the 88C Certificate. Datar filed proceedings under Section 33B of the Act in 1990. After the 88C Certificate was confirmed with the passing of the SC Order, the Tahsildar had closed the Section 88C proceedings on February 13, 1989.

5. Datar expired on August 17, 1991. He had no immediate family, apart from his two sisters, namely, Lilabai Tilak (“Lilabai”), who passed away on August 22, 1991, and Kamlabai Athavale (“Kamlabai”), who passed away on February 22, 2001.

6. The heirs of Lilabai (“Tilaks”) and the heirs of Kamlabai (“Athavales”) are the ones in whose name the captioned proceedings are being prosecuted today. The Petitioners claim to have an interest in the Subject Property, and claim a statutory entitlement to pursue proceedings under Sections 33B of the Act that had been initiated by Datar way back in 1990. The Petitioners had filed proceedings under Section 33B of the Act on July 4, 2017, which were rejected, against which they filed an Appeal in 2019, which also came to be rejected by the Tahsildar and the Agricultural Land Tribunal, on the premise that being heirs of the late Datar, the right to terminate the tenancy could not be inherited by them, and that right, based on the personal requirement of Datar to cultivate the land, abated upon the demise of Datar.

7. Thereafter, the Collector, who considered a further appeal, set aside that order, granting possession of the Subject Land to the Petitioners on the premise that once the SC Order upheld the grant of the 88C Certificate, the tenancy rights of the tenant had came to an end. It is a revision of this order sought by the tenants that led to the Impugned Order being passed.

8. In 2002, the offspring of Kamlabai and Lilabai i.e. the generation before the Petitioners, had moved an application, purportedly in the proceedings that had been filed by Datar in 1990, under Section 33B of the Act (“1990 Application”). They had sought to continue the said proceedings on the premise that they had inherited the right to do so. Whether proceedings under Section 33B would abate upon the death of Datar or whether they could be revived subsequently in this manner, is a question that has remained at large, since the said application seeking to continue the old proceedings ha